How Facebook might take on the Amazon Echo

It’s official, nearly every major tech company wants to put a listening device in your home—or as they call it, a smart speaker. The latest? Facebook.

That’s the chatter coming from Asia, where much of Silicon Valley’s hardware is manufactured, via a report from Taiwan-based DigiTimes on Tuesday. Citing a source in contact with the “upstream supply chain,” the site claims that Facebook is preparing to release it’s own smart home speaker that will also include a 15-inch touchscreen display.

If that kind of product sounds familiar, that’s because Amazon just made a big splash with its Echo Show, which combines the voice recognition and speaker functions of the original Echo speaker with a 7-inch touchscreen.

Facebook could take on the Amazon Echo.

Image: Christina Ascani/mashable

The report claims that the smart home device was designed at Facebook’s secretive Building 8 skunkworks lab and will be manufactured by Pegatron Technology, one of Apple’s partners in the manufacture of iPhones in recent years. According to the source, the device will use a display from LG Display.

If true, the choice by Facebook to leapfrog the speaker-only approach of those following Amazon’s Echo, including Apple with the HomePod and Google Home, and going straight to an integrated speaker with a screen could hint at more to come. Specifically, Facebook’s goals of further promoting its video and livestreaming tools, as well as its ambitions around creating original video content, would dovetail nicely with a Facebook-optimized smart home device.

The problem, as usual with Facebook, is the issue of privacy

The problem, as usual with Facebook, is the issue of privacy. The aforementioned companies have varying track records on privacy, but Facebook in particular is a brand that doesn’t immediately come to mind when thinking of a company you’d trust to put an always-on microphone in your home.

But with over 2 billion users, if Facebook introduces a smart home device that displays the photos of your friends and family on Facebook, it’s likely that such a product would be too compelling to resist, privacy issues aside.

The report goes on to claim that the device will be revealed some time in the first quarter of 2018.

When contacted by Mashable, Facebook wouldn’t confirm or deny whether or not it’s working on a smart home device, with a spokesperson saying, “Facebook does not comment on rumors and speculation.”